


That's the day I knew you were my pet

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Banter, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Not Beta Read, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-29
Updated: 2014-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-04 02:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2905946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor needs to work on his bedside manners. But probably not as much as River.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That's the day I knew you were my pet

**Author's Note:**

> I was trying to order my fics when I stumbled upon this thing. It's very fluffy and domestic and silly and I never write that. So why not publish it.  
> Warning: it's _very_ fluffy.  
>  Title from _Sea of Love_ by Phil Phillips.

“River, why are you...” The Doctor halted on the library’s threshold, the book he was planning to put away in hand. “Is everything all right? Your face looks _peculiar_.”

The entirety of her person looked un-River-like.

Rolled in a cover, River was spread out on the largest couch, deep and leathery, the sexy one as Martha mockingly called it. Books were stacked on the floor near her head and coloured folders were gaping and spewing scribbled sheets on every surface at hand. River’s body was wrapped in a blanket of wool, papers and books, her arms splayed on the patchwork of notes and fabric peeking underneath. Her pen was vainly swirling above a notebook, clearly not writing but rehearsing words.

Cyclone? Break down? Lost papers? Impromptu History round table followed by a round robin and now he would have to get rid of the academics bodies?

It was River Song after all.

“That would be my knackered face, dear,” River answered after a while. She dropped the pen on the notebook and looked up to him with uncertain intent before sinking even deeper in the couch. “Time Lord, have mercy; you look _bored_.”

He snorted, only partially reassured. She was snippy, but definitely tired; at the end of the couch where her feet were poking out from under the blanket, there was no sign of life.

Usually her toes would sway in a lazy rhythm, following the pauses and outbursts in her writing. During their most dull evenings –meaning he had sprained an ankle and was chair-ridden for a few hours-, he would try to toss slippers on her feet, a game requiring all the more skill that River would be absently swinging her feet. After the third failure, she would lose patience and shoot the slippers. Every time.

At least, they ended up with a discount at the planet of slippers.

Tonight she was lying, lifeless and befuddled, as if intrigued by her own state of awakening.

His feet led him timidly to the couch, slowing down cautiously when he reached the middle of the room. Unnecessary precaution; he had been in the line of fire since the dawn of time.

“Have I anything to do with your state?” he carefully asked. “Should I be prepared to dodge a book? Because I am not getting anywhere near you if…”

“I doubt I have enough strength to even sass you out of here,” she sighed.

He tilted his head and gestured broadly at the squadrons of notes and books waiting for the couch and River to surrender.

“Then”, he inquired more peeved than he wanted to sound. “Why are you working?”

With a dry clack, River let go of the notebook on the stack on her chest, abdomen and legs. Practically entombed. The Doctor trotted up closer, still not convinced he should lower the book he was holding against him as a shield. River blew a curl from her face and adjusted her neck on the couch arm. Her brows did a quick calculation, furrowing uncertainly before smoothing out.  The Doctor leant on his elbows on the back of the couch, overlooking on River, and tried an encouraging pout. Narrowing her eyes, she took a deep breath and started:

“I just finished a round of conference in England in the 1930s, but it turned out the friend who invited me also needed me to fight German spies. Pr. Horatio Smith, maybe you’ve heard of him. Anyway, that’s usually the moment when aliens start to invade. Sontarans. Except you weren’t there, Torchwood was, and I had to deal with a very horny Jack and his team of the time. Smith antagonised Jack’s boss, Jack would not stop hitting on Smith, one of Jack’s kids clobbered one of Smith’s kids.

We accidentally introduced the German spies to the Sontarans and had to stop a very unlikely treaty to be signed. We decided to zap everyone to the right time and space, but as you expect, they got mixed up and we sent the wrong ones to the wrong planets. Bloody Time Agency showed up.

We explained to them we were not trying to rewrite the entirety of Human history _and_ Sontaran History, while hiding Jack from their eyes in a haystack. We all ended up in detention. For hours. Jack was still in the haystack and by the time we escaped, the Time Agency had solved the Great German/Sontaran Swap of 1939, but Jack had developed an alarming allergy to hay and was very _slowly_ dying of suffocation.”

The words had flown out of her mouth without interruption. She bit back her frustration so hard that her eyes were starting to well up. For a moment, he was struck, not knowing what to do. The book slid down the sofa and thumped against her covered hip. The distraction was all she needed to compose herself and when he looked to her she only appeared annoyed. She rolled her eyes and resumed, adopting an overstated dismissive tone.

“Oh, it was lovely, _lovely_ , because we could not exactly wait for him to die, since we were chased by the Time Agency and no one was willing to end his pain by killing him. So we ran fast and took him to the hospital, where I met one of my colleagues who very nicely reminded me of that paper I had to submit in thirty one centuries and now I am exhausted and can’t relax because I want to finish this thing first.”

“’kay”, the Doctor offered, baffled.

Desperate times…

He rounded the sofa and slipped by her side, cautiously removing the books and stack of sheets, to settle on the couch. The TARDIS might have stretched it a little for their convenience, good girl. River  heaved a sigh, plucking the misplaced books one by one and putting them on his extended legs, using him as a table, so she could still leaf through them.

“Why don’t you…” He pointed at the reading device besides the couch, careful not to topple the books she had placed in his lap. Her eyes went to her bedside table, then to the large display of books and finally stopped on his face.

“I can’t consult all of them at once if they are on the same screen. Believe me, books are the best solution.”

He shifted closer, flinging an arm across her shoulders, and studied the pages of writing in her lap.

“Your hand writing is really awful”, he remarked, surprised. “It looks as if your pen violently murdered each letter and their bodies remained contorted in pain.”

“Thank you, Sweetie.”

She glared at him from the corner of her eyes and shuffled against him as brutally as her state allowed her. He squeaked as an apology.

“I’m relieved you show such interest in my penmanship”, she continued, returning to her notes. “It was of use when I asked your future self to proof-read my paper on Judoon.”

He huffed, disgruntled.

“Why don’t you take a rest? It’s a time machine, you can…”

“I can’t sleep”, she moaned. “I’m frustrated and it’s the only thing calming me.”

 _The only thing?_ It was a challenge if he ever saw one.

“Marking papers?” he asked, slipping the right amount of sarcasm not to be pushed off the sofa.

“Collecting data”, she tersely corrected.

She sank deeper in the pile of pillows she had erected to support her back. Her face seemed snoozy, despite her earlier claim. It would only take a little to get her to sleep.

“Do you want me to help?” he tried.

“Don’t be silly. Last time you did there were so many doodles on my notes that Pr.Bern asked me if my husband and I had added a new member to the family.” She was moving about, displacing papers and fumbling behind his back. Letting go of whatever had animated her so briefly, she heaved a sigh and touched his hand on her shoulder. “Help me find my rubber instead. I seem to have misplaced it.”

“What colour?”

He sat up, checking on the sofa and between the cushions to see if it had not escaped there.

“It’s an eraser”, she growled. “You know, blue and pink, parallelepipoid. Surely, that’s something you cannot mistake for a toe.”

His head whipped back at her, suspicious.

“Why a toe? Does the job imply diving under cover to retrieve it? I’ve seen parallelepipoid blue toes before. There is a squared-toe tribe in the seventh kingdom of Ssonu, which dips the toes of its mayor in blue so that the population can worship...”

River smacked his nearest arm surprisingly hard.

“Sweetie, I am dressed, I am not Ssonusian. Don’t act so damn embarrassed. I don’t lounge on the couch naked while doing homework.”

“You said that last time and your father… Never mind.” He dove under her cover. “Blue eraser, here I come.”

“Rory gave it to me”, she mused. “Well, traded it rather, for a violet highlighter.”

“You were robbed”, he cried from under the cover.

He was between her feet and River let out a low chuckle that shook them both. Her knee was nibbling at his stomach and he pushed her on the side.

“I _know_ ”, she crooned. “Don’t ever tell it to Dad though, he would be devastated.”

“Swindling his own daughter”, the Doctor added in a disapproving tone.

“He _really_ wanted the highlighter.”

The Doctor emerged from under the cover, making half the content of River’s lap fall on the floor. River silently lifted her hands in despair.

“What? You are lucky it’s not our actual bed. You emptied the content of your pencil sharpener between the blankets.”

She grunted at him and he narrowed his eyes, settling back beside her.

 _A little less gravity, Old Girl, a little more heating,_ he mentally pleaded.

River was busy for a minute rearranging the cover around her and the books on their lap. Stacking and folding them neatly, and the Doctor could not repress his admiration for her ability to build even in the darkest times of-

A word caught his attention on the paper.

“River…”

“Mmmm?”

“What are you working on _exactly_?”

She interrupted her piling up to glare at him, aggravated and a tad embarrassed, before turning her attention back to the books.

“A comprehensive study of the symbolism and role of hats in the Geldian society between the third and fifth century”, she answered.

He shook his head and picked up her paper pad from her lap.

“River, you wrote…” He flicked through the pages. ”One and a half chapter about tractors in Soviet Russia and after that…”His ears heated up. “Penned a very graphic short fiction involving Sainte-Beuve and Victor Hugo.”

He shot her a confused look and she lifted her head from the book she was trying to read. He leant closer and delicately retrieved the manual from her hands.

“I think that’s enough research for tonight, Professor Song.”

“But I don’t want to…”

He slipped the pad and book under the sofa, trusting the TARDIS to have them away for now and hopefully on her desk in the morning. And not in his seat.

“You can take my word the entirety of the academic community will be grateful if you go to bed now.”

He swung to his feet and tried lifting her out of the couch, still wrapped in her blanket. Several pyramids of books collapsed and she winced quite brutally. Concerned, he dove back under the cover and peeped under her ruffled shirt. She let him, her hands curling on his arms. A large bruise was blossoming on her ribcage.

He popped out of the blanket and quirked an eyebrow.

“Have you by any chance been in a brawl?”

“Shall I restart? Aliens, Germans, Jack, nurses? I’ve been in several fights.”

He gawked.

“You fought with the nurses?”

She answered with a tart look and he lifted his hands in the air, noncommittal.

“I won’t ask.”

But he really wanted to.

She was tired and stressed out and bruised and there was little he could do to fix what was her human side.

He kneeled against the couch, elbows on the edge, fingers crooked against his chest, fearing to reach out for her.

“Do you need anything?” he quietly tried, as if it was a question she indeed had forbidden him to ask.

She repressed a smile, biting her lower lip and letting a book drop in her lap. He had a gesture towards her body, maybe to offer to patch her up, but she beat him to the draw and grabbed his hands, pulling him up to her. Had she not been half-unconscious, he would have been terrified for his life.

She put him beside her, half lying off the couch, and nestled there.

“Something soft, something quiet, something warm, and silence. Oh, please, let there be silence”, she breathed audibly.

After a few moments of silence during which he was waiting for her to add a quip and not getting it, he laughed quietly and she weakly punched his arm.

“I thought you had set me a challenge”, he argued. “You’re really not making it hard.”

“Yeah, I’m that nice sometimes.”

He huffed.

“You’re not nice. You’re crushing me.”

“And you offered to be a pillow the moment you walked in. Not that I should accept such offerings.” She nudged his abdomen. “You’re skinnier than Jenny.”

He looked down, alarmed, putting a very slight distance between them. She huddled closer and he conceded.

“Okay, but how would you know about sleeping on Jenny?”

“Might have gone trekking with Vastra and co. two Easters ago. We lost Strax”, she explained, yawning. “Things got complicated and scary. Vastra ended up having to sleep in Strax’s tent. Night terrors in the wild. Not fun.”

He chuckled, repositioning his arms around her.

“Now, you’re just making this up”, he chided.

“I think I’m trying to put myself to sleep with my own stories. I’m terrible at this. _You_ ’re terrible at this.”

She jabbed at his chest and he grimaced. Pointy claws.

“Oh, what did I do now? I knew the moment I walked in I had done something.”

“You did nothing. You’re a rubbish pillow and you ask too many questions. You should be better at putting people to sleep, blabber-head.” She paused and growled, shielding her eyes from the light inside the sofa corner. “My head hurts. I’m so tired I could well let myself be knocked out. Pick a book and hit me on the head. That might work.”

He blinked at her nape, the only part of her he could see in her armour of papers and duvets.

“I could hurt you doing that,” he whispered.

She turned her head, taking the measure of his sudden change in mood, and stared at him.

“No, you won’t.” Her tone was reassuring and her poking at his chest gentler. “Too skinny, remember?”

They were still for a minute, eyes locked, finding again their breath, both coming back from places where they had hurt each other. It hurt a little to see so clearly in each other and he shut his mind tighter.

River was sensible enough not to probe. Or tired enough.

He finally cleared his throat and she raised an eyebrow.

“Do you want a story?” he asked. “I’m good at stories.”

“I’m not a child.”

“You emptied the content of your pencil sharpener on my couch. No doubt your Pr. Bern would have something interesting to say about that.”

“I won’t argue over who is the child between the two of us, I don’t want you to cancel my gold card to Universe Park again,” she sighed, tidying her lap of books and notes.

“They have everything wrong about everything in there! They corrupt generations of children.”

“And that’s why I love going”, she beamed. “Beholding generations of children absorbing fairy tales about space. It’s a professor’s guilty pleasure. I do that with my students, I get suspended. Maybe tortured. I should try that.”

He shook his head frantically.

“You’re scary like this. Far too little lying, but I get zero useful information, like where you hid the ball pit with the Old Girl’s help.”

“We don’t have a ball pit.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m too tired to be lying. You said it yourself.”

“Then you must be sleeping”, he simply answered.

“What? You’re not making sense, but you _are_ being antagonising.” A menacing grumble made her body thrum. “Now shut up, I need to sleep.”

“Do you? You are sleeping now.”

“I hate to repeat myself but: ‘what?’”

He smiled before stating, smug:

“You’ve been dreaming for a while now and sleeping for longer.”

She lifted herself on her elbow and gestured at him.

“But you’re here?”

Around them, the library had frozen, like a photo taken and plastered against the walls. Even the books near his hands. Even the light. The sofa felt oddly real.

“Didn’t want to wake you up” he explained, proud. “I might have eased you to sleep and followed.”

“So, you’re not really here?”

“You aren’t either. Do keep up.” He pointed an index at her forehead, pushing her head against the cushion. “It’s a dream.”

Her head pressed against the sofa, testing its surface. She found no resistance. She found no head.

She sat up, cover and books all gone, but her stubbornness to keep the sofa, even in her sleep, was positively extraordinary.

“Why in the world are we still in the library buried under books then?”

“No idea”, he laughed and scratched his semblance of a head. Never had he experienced such sharpness in dream. The TARDIS’ library had been reproduced in its tiniest details and River was certainly exactly how she was supposed to look. He felt alive there. Her dream world looked and felt like life. He repressed a shiver, fighting the urge to warn her.

Dreams looking like life are dangerous.

(eternal life is hell and River sleeps eternally)

He felt her dragging him back. He had sunk a little too deep inside his own head and she had caught him. Anchoring him to her and that silly sofa that really should not have still been there.

The sofa with the pen chips and the eraser and them still folded inside like the books she had arranged to keep them from falling.

River’s mind was definitely different from his. Or it could have been his head. Bridged consciousness. Complicated thing.

“Dreaming is made for resting; resting usually is boring”, he resumed, distracting himself. He was trying to assess her mind freely, now that he wasn’t focused on dragging her in.

It looked beautiful.

“I don’t question how _boring_ your dreams can be”, he concluded with a faint smile on his faint lips.

River creased her nose, leant back and jumped off the couch, taking him down with her into a sudden ocean of something only River could imagine.

“Oh, is that a challenge?” she purred. “I’ll show you dreams, rude boy.”


End file.
